


the silent seconds between lightning and thunder

by ikvros



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Accidental Bonding, Additional Warnings In Author's Note, Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Explicit Sexual Content, Knotting, M/M, Mating Cycles/In Heat, Mild Blood, Non-Traditional Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Pre-Time Skip, Voyeurism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-25
Updated: 2020-12-25
Packaged: 2021-03-11 03:26:51
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,200
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28238421
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ikvros/pseuds/ikvros
Summary: “I do not care what you are, Felix,” Dimitri says, circling his wrist with warm fingers. “Only that it is you.” Felix meets his eyes again, rapt and wordless as Dimitri brings his hand close to his own face and presses a kiss to the inside of his wrist. Dimitri’s cheek is feverish beneath his palm.“You were saying my name,” Felix breathes.In which Felix is an alpha (until one day, without warning, he no longer is).
Relationships: Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd/Felix Hugo Fraldarius
Comments: 16
Kudos: 86
Collections: 2020 Dimilix Exchange





	the silent seconds between lightning and thunder

**Author's Note:**

  * For [plaemon](https://archiveofourown.org/users/plaemon/gifts).



> IT WAS ME THE WHOLE TIME LYDIA 👁👄👁
> 
> additional warnings: iterating again that this is set during academy phase, so please read at your own discretion. felix (accidentally but not really) watches dimitri pleasure himself when he doesn't know felix is in the room, there is (actually) accidental bonding, and _all_ of the consent in this is dubious at best due to heat/rut, but they're both into it. enjoy luvs

The day is hot. Felix sheathes his sword and wipes the sweat from his brow, catching an alarming whiff of his own scent where it wafts from his glands—Manuela’s patches have all but lost their effectiveness. He smells like a bad mood, like a storm cloud funneling toward the earth. Like _stay away,_ acrid and blade-sharp. It is a telling scent.

Rutting is an inconvenience.

Felix supposes he should count his blessings. Most alphas are not simply inconvenienced by rut; they are overcome. It’s an entire days-long affair spent doing nothing but fucking, or thinking of fucking, of fruitless humping and pacing and aggression so volatile most bedrooms here at the Monastery are locked from the outside. It’s mindless instinct, a waste of energy and daylight to all but those who have need for its purpose.

Which Felix does not. So that he is able to channel the restlessness of rut into sword practice rather than spending himself to exhaustion is a blessing, if he’s to endure it at all (And if he has to jerk himself off three times before bed, he sleeps all the better for it).

But this—the overbearing scent that can only be dampened with magic—this is an inconvenience. The patches usually last him an entire day, and he is hard-pressed to believe Maneula’s magic is to blame. His glands are working overtime for reasons unknown.

An omega keeps her head down when she passes by him, her grip tightening visibly around her arrow quiver. Another alpha gives Felix a dirty look before moving around him to store his practice weapon. It must be even worse than Felix realizes, for it to have traveled any length across the training grounds. He’s bound to get an earful from one of the knights if he doesn’t take his leave. 

“Felix,” says a voice that makes the hair on the back of his neck stand up.

Felix turns, and sees Dimitri.

Perfect.

“What do you want,” Felix bites out.

“I—oh.” Dimitri blinks at him slowly, pupils dilating. Felix watches his nostrils flare, and catches Dimitri’s own scent in turn when the breeze kicks up. There’s no aggression in it, but there is a strange, budding urgency that sets Felix on edge. “I was coming to ask if you would help me practice a new technique, but I think—you might be—ah, that is, you _smell_ like…”

“Shut up,” Felix snaps, slapping a hand over one of the patches on his neck. “I’m well aware. It’s been two days of this already.”

_“Two days?”_

“It’s none of your damn business, boar.”

Dimitri’s brows furrow under the line of his bangs. “Shouldn’t you be in the infirmary? Or—in your room, away from—”

“Away from omegas?” Felix says, sneering. “Because I’m dangerous and I can’t control my urge to _breed?”_

Dimitri’s mouth clicks shut at that, scent flaring with enough interest to make Felix’s nose twitch. “That is not what I meant,” he says quickly. “And I do not mean to pry—”

“Then _don’t._ All you need to know is that I’ve been cleared. I don’t owe you an explanation.”

“Of course not. I’ve—just never heard of anyone being coherent enough during rut to go about their day. Color me surprised. And impressed.”

Felix feels irritation rippling over his skin, Dimitri’s quiet awe the barest drop of water. Felix already knows he isn’t normal, but _Dimitri_ knowing it feels wrong, invasive. Shame curls in his gut where it wasn’t before. “Not all alphas are mindless beasts like you,” he says. “Isn’t that why they keep you locked up in Abyss?”

He regrets saying it instantly. It isn’t exactly common knowledge—Felix only knows it because he had followed Dimitri there a week ago, a late night detour that left him stunned and flushed from the collar up (the Professor had been waiting just at the entrance when Felix stumbled out, dazed, and Felix could see the knowing in his eyes despite his silence). Dimitri had not returned to the Monastery for days after that.

“I choose to spend my ruts in Abyss,” Dimitri says, unphased. “It’s safer for everyone, including myself. And it’s less disruptive to daily life here at the Monastery.” That’s all he says, but Felix hears what he knows: that Dimitri spends his ruts kept away from people, locked in iron shackles, because a door alone will not hold him. It had been true at the palace in Faerghus, and it’s true here.

“A boar rutting among heathens,” Felix says. “Fitting, I have to say.”

“They are not heathens,” Dimitri says with an amused huff of a laugh. Felix knows better; he remembers that brickheaded brute Balthus from his brief exploration of the dilapidated corridors. “Not all of them,” Dimitri amends. He clears his throat. “I am… well-accommodated.”

There’s a twinge in Felix’s stomach at that, imagining what Dimitri’s _accommodations_ are like. As if he hadn’t thought of it just last night and million other times since he learned of his whereabouts. 

“Forget I asked,” he says. “I have something to do.”

“Oh,” Dimitri says. And it’s there again, that flaring of scent, ripened and heady. It makes Felix’s skin itch—he knows alpha arousal when he smells it. It’s just barely on the wind, a flicker, a spark. It should be abrasive to his nose, but instead it is bright and warm and strange, heightening something in him in turn. He can feel how wet his glands are beneath the patches on his neck, his wrists, how they itch and smart at being smothered.

He needs to get out of here.

“Move,” Felix says. When Dimitri does not immediately step aside, he scowls and makes to walk around him. “Are you deaf? I said to get out of my way.”

Dimitri blocks his path at the last second, and Felix nearly slams into his chest. 

“Ah, wait,” Dimitri says. “Please.”

Felix narrows his eyes. It wouldn’t do any good to lose his temper now; he already feels the weight of eyes on them from across the yard, and the last thing he needs is word of this getting back to his father. “Whatever your problem is, boar, I’m not in the mood. Step aside before I run you through.”

“No,” Dimitri says, firmly. His pupils are huge and dark, his body still as a predator’s.

Felix sputters. “You— _no?”_

“I… do not want you to leave.”

Felix is momentarily lost for words. Dimitri seems present enough to understand the ridiculousness of this sentiment; his features flicker with uncertainty and confusion despite the solid plant of his feet in the earth, angled to stop Felix should he take another step.

Everything falls away except for this singular, immovable obstacle. Felix’s hand moves to grip his sword.

“What the hell do you two think you’re doing?”

Felix whirls around. There’s a snarl, loud and animal, and it takes Felix a moment to realize it’s torn from his own throat, that his chest is heaving with breath, that he smells like violence and lust and iron. It makes his head spin—or is it Dimitri’s scent doing that?

“Felix.” The ringing in his ears begins to fade. He is sobered to see that it is Catherine who stands before him, unflinching. Her blue eyes are stern on his, her hand on Thunderbrand’s hilt. Behind her, the buzzing activity of the training grounds has halted. Students from all over the yard stand stock-still, watching him and Dimitri with rapt attention.

“You stink of rut,” Catherine says to him. She flicks a look Dimitri’s way. “You both need to get out of here before someone gets hurt.”

It’s the unfortunate domino-effect of rut pheromones: they breed aggression in _everyone._

“I was just leaving,” Felix grits, forcing his lips back over the teeth he’s bared at her. He turns again to fix his glare on Dimitri. 

“My apologies,” Dimitri says, and he sounds strained. His effort is standing aside is visible.

“I trust you that both of you can see yourselves to your quarters,” Catherine says. “Unless you need to be escorted.”

“That won’t be necessary,” Dimitri says. More lowly, pitched so that only Felix can hear, “I’ll wait until there’s some distance between us.”

It makes goosebumps ripple over Felix’s skin. “Get ahold of yourself,” he spits. He isn’t sure which of them he’s talking to.

He shoulder checks Dimitri on the way out.

* * *

Something is wrong.

Felix has been pulling at his cock for what feels like forever, coming over himself and his bed in weak but endless ribbons, and it has done nothing to break the fever slowly cooking him through. He hasn’t even been able to knot—doing so usually relieves the worst of things, even if he has nothing to lock himself inside of. Just the pressure of his fist is enough, the dry squeeze of his fingers—it leaves him melted, boneless, satiated for another day.

But no matter what he tries, his knot won’t pop.

And no matter how many times he tries to picture some faceless, writhing omega body, all he can think of is Dimitri—the way he looks when he’s training, how his body moves with the powerful fluidity of a whip, the sweat that rolls down his skin in the sun. He thinks of Dimitri’s scent, consciously muted at all times, striking like lightning when he lets it slip. He’d let it slip at the grounds today. Felix swears it’s still stuck in his nose for the vividness with which he remembers it.

He growls in frustration as he comes again over his fist, already mourning the height of another pathetic climax. He doesn’t knot. He doesn’t go soft, either. His cock is starting to feel raw, his skin over warm and uncomfortable, and he has never felt less in control of his body than he does now. It is even more terrifying than it is miserable—not even when he’d first presented had he succumbed completely to the mind-numbing desires of rut. He feels himself teetering on the precipice of something unknown, something so dark and deep he doesn’t dare look over the edge.

He wipes his hand on the sweat-damp bed sheets, forcing himself to focus on anything but the ceaseless fantasies that force their way behind his eyes.

It’s dark through the window; the sun has set. It’s been hours, then.

Felix longs for the days when he thought he was a beta, free from a lifetime of _this._ Witnessing Dimitri’s presentation had instilled dread in him at thirteen years old, and perhaps that alone was what kept his own at bay until his sixteenth year, far past the usual window. Even the old man had been surprised.

Now that he thinks of it, it had been just weeks after the western rebellion that his first rut hit—an emotionally volatile time, to say the least. Dimitri had been at least partially to blame for his state. Felix had thought of him then, too.

Something _clicks_. 

Felix clings to the clarity that comes with the realization. He forces himself from the bed, walking on shaky legs to the water basin and wiping the come from his body with a damp rag. Dimitri will be as clueless as ever, and the thought of causing another scene gives Felix pause, but if he doesn’t test his theory now, he might not have another opportunity. Every part of his body is screaming at him to _go._

Even so, his body loathes the drag and restriction of clothing, and the tender glands on his neck protest when he smooths fresh patches over them. They’re swollen beneath his fingertips—yet another anomaly. It takes several deep breaths and all of Felix’s lucidity to will his erection down enough to be able to walk like a normal person.

It matters not—Dimitri is only one door down. 

“Boar!”

Felix pounds the wood with fist. The corridor is empty. 

Felix tries to think past the haze clouding his mind. He figures it must be around dinner time now—Dimitri is likely in the dining hall with all the others. It’s too much of a risk to confront him there; Felix knows that, and yet there is a desperate, pitiful anxiety in his chest at the thought of returning to his room and confronting this alone. His nails bite into his palms.

“You looking for His Princliness?”

Felix’s head whips up in time to see Claude sauntering down the corridor.

His presence is inoffensive enough that Felix doesn’t immediately react. Claude remains mysteriously scentless—Felix doesn’t know what his presentation even _is._

“No,” Felix says, though he is still standing directly in front of Dimitri’s door.

Claude raises his eyebrows, but he doesn’t mention it. “Well, I have it on good authority that he won’t be back for a while. Like, days.”

“What are you talking about?”

“He’s rutting.”

That brings Felix up short.

“That’s not possible,” he says.

It isn’t. Not so soon. Felix has only ever heard of back-to-back ruts when they’re _induced_ by something, like a poison or dark magic. But then, that _is_ possible, isn’t it? Dimitri has nearly none of the protective provisions here that he does in Fhirdiad. Not even meal testers. It would be so, so easy to poison a lord here at the Monastery.

Claude laughs, easy and unbothered, crossing his arms as he leans against the wall. “You don’t have to believe me, but I saw it with my own eyes. And smelled it. With my nose. _Way_ more than I ever wanted to. Teach got ahold of him before anything happened. Couldn’t say where they went, though.”

Violent jealousy curls in Felix’s gut.

“Woah,” Claude says, and Felix comes back to himself with a growl rumbling low in his throat. “You alright? Are you—oh.” His brows raise, green eyes glittering with something like amusement. “You totally are. But I thought—wow. Now that’s…interesting.”

“I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about, but I don’t need your help,” Felix grouses, sweeping past him. “I know where he’s gone.”

“Hey…” Claude says. “You sure that’s a good idea? You realize what you’re gonna be walking into if you find him, right?”

Felix throws him a look over his shoulder. “Don’t condescend to me. I’m perfectly capable of fending off a wild animal.”

“Yeah, that’s… not what I’m worried about.”

“Are you going to try to stop me?” It’s the only thing that matters.

“Hey. You’re your own man,” Claude says, leaning off the wall. “By all means, do as you please.”

Now, why can’t _everyone_ be as agreeable as Claude? 

“I will.” Felix turns on his heel and stalks away, a singular destination at the forefront of his mind. He’ll get to the bottom of this if it’s the last thing he does. He’ll look Dimitri in the eyes and find his answer in them. And after that—well. He won’t think about it too hard until he gets there. 

“Don’t say I didn’t warn you,” Claude calls. Felix barely pays him mind as he turns the corner.

* * *

The Abyss keeper is a cagey man—the Professor had made it look so easy. It takes Felix reaching for his sword to get him to admit he knows what Abyss even _is,_ and all of the loose gold in Felix’s pocket to bribe his way underground, but it’s worth it. Each step down the crumbling old staircase is another step closer to Dimitri.

Felix descends into darkness, eyes straining in the long gaps between torches. His senses are so heightened he hears every drop of water that strikes the stone, every scurrying rat that excavates his path.

Dimitri was right, in a sense—between the dank, rotting bits, the main halls of Abyss are full of everyday people, men and women and children who sell their wares and make their lives.

It just also happens to be full of mercenaries and exiles from all walks of life—and Balthus, who is somewhere far away, Felix hopes. He does not have the time today to fight him to the death.

Felix has to be careful as he retraces his old steps. The abandoned corridors he must stick to as he wanders deeper into the maze are confusing; all of them look the same in the dim light. He relies on memory—left here, right up there, around the corner. He closes his eyes, focusing all his attention .

And realizes his sense of hearing is not the only thing that’s been heightened.

Dimitri has passed through here. His scent sticks to the stagnant air, a trail marker of sorts. Felix isn’t sure whether that means he’s come through recently or if it’s simply that potent. Induced ruts, Felix has heard, send the body into overdrive. 

From experience, Felix knows there are guards that patrol every inch of Abyss, even the seemingly empty parts. It’s no different from the Monastery really; it’s just that they’re fewer and far between, and a lot easier to slip past them in the dark, especially once he’s past the bridge. If Felix didn’t know any better, he’d say there seems to be no one wandering around these ruins at all.

But Dimitri’s scent is still on the air, and he follows it until it brings him to the mouth of another corridor, where it heightens in intensity. Wherever he is, the room isn’t scent-proofed like their bedrooms are on the surface.

Felix takes a deep breath and peers around the corner.

At the end of the hall stand two guards on either side of a wooden door.

That would be it, then.

The guards are large, burly men in brawler’s armor with giant broadswords strapped to their waists—both alphas by the smell of them. Their scents are as unpleasant and abrasive to Felix’s nose as he thinks they should be, but it doesn’t spur him to react in the way he expects. His most base instincts are surprisingly shy in the face of Abyss, suppressed either by adrenaline or the importance of this mission.

And it is important, he thinks, though he cannot linger for too long on the why of it.

“Hey, you there!”

Shit. Well, it’s now or never. 

Felix steps out of the shadows, and walks forward.

“You’re not supposed to be here,” says the guard on the left, assessing him. “What are you doing all the way across the bridge? How did you get past the other guards?”

“It wasn’t difficult,” Felix says. At least he’s armed.

The first guard narrows his eyes. “State your business.”

Felix stands up a little straighter. “The boar—I. Dimitri. I need to see Dimitri.”

“We have orders not to let anyone into this room,” says the second guard.

Felix sucks in a breath. It’s not like he’d expected them to just stand aside, but he didn’t come all this way to be refused. “It’s important.”

The guards look at each other, amusement flickering between their expressions before they turn their eyes back on Felix. “Get lost,” the first guard says.

Felix does not. He decides to dig in his heels. “Look. I’m not just some random person—” 

“I don’t care who you are,” the guard says, voice pitched lower—more threat in its timbre than before. It gives Felix pause. “But those are some fancy clothes you’re wearing. You some sorta noble? Let me let you in on a little Abyss secret, kid: who you are up there doesn’t matter down here. I take orders from one master, and it sure as shit ain’t you.”

Felix glares at him in silence.

“You think you’re the first omega to stand here and demand we let ‘em see the Prince of Faerghus? You better run along now and lock yourself away before it’s too late.” His grin goes from condescending to salacious. “Unless any old alpha will do.”

“Smelling like that, he won’t have any trouble finding one,” the second guard adds. “You oughta be more careful down here. We have all sorts, you know.”

“What are you talking about? I’m not—” 

“What’s going on here?” comes a smooth voice.

“Boss!” The guards straighten up immediately, and Felix whirls around to see a young man sauntering down the hall like he owns the place.

The first thing Felix notices are his fine features—beneath the fall of lilac hair, he's all delicate bone and high cheeks. He carries no weapon that Felix can see, but there is danger in the way he moves, a sort of lethal feline confidence that Felix likens to one of the particularly ornery Monastery strays. He’s not much shorter than Felix, but he is slighter, more lithe beneath his tight-laced clothing. His heeled boots clack loudly against the stone.

“Who are you?” Felix hears himself ask.

“I think I should be asking _you_ that, friend. But, wait, don’t tell me.” The man takes his chin between his thumb and forefinger as he comes to a stop just a pace away, and Felix’s eyes are drawn to the glossy pink paint wetting his lips. “The hair, the eyes…let me guess. You’re a Fraldarius.”

“Yes,” Felix says cautiously. His eyes flick toward the door. “And I need to get in there.”

The man ignores him. “I think you met my friend. Alpha, if I recall. But if that’s true, why do you smell like you’re in heat?”

 _Omega? Heat?_ What in the name of the Goddess is everyone talking about? The only omega between the four of them is this guy, Felix thinks, with his cloyingly sweet scent that he may or may not be pumping out on purpose. It’s giving Felix a headache.

“I _am_ an alpha,” he growls.

Behind him, the guards stifle their laughter.

 _“Oh._ You know, I think I understand, actually,” the man says. “How peculiar.”

Felix feels his grip on himself slipping. “I don’t have time for this. Something is happening to me, and I need to see him. Are you going to let me in or not?”

“I already told you,” the first guard begins, “it’s not gon—” 

Yuri holds a hand up and he stops speaking. “No. Let Felix in. I’d like to see how this all plays out.”

“Felix?” the second guard says, while the other sets to unlocking the door. There’s surprise on his face. “You’re the one he always asks for.”

Felix doesn’t have time to ponder that before Yuri says, “Catch,” and his palms open instinctively. In them lands a wrought iron key. “Don’t let him break the chains. Oh, and my name is Yuri, by the by. You’ll wanna remember that.”

And with that, the heavy door is pulled open. A warm wall of air beckons Felix forward.

“Boss, what if—”

“Don’t worry,” Yuri says. “I doubt we’ll be seeing either of them for a while.”

It’s the last thing Felix hears before the heavy door slams shut behind him.

* * *

Felix is first assaulted by scent. The smell of rut, of Dimitri’s rut, devastatingly familiar and so concentrated it makes him dizzy. 

He had been with Dimitri the night he presented. He knows this smell, intimately, no matter how many times he’s tried to banish it from his mind. But nothing in Felix’s memory or imagination could have prepared him for this: the image of Dimitri as he is now, laying naked on the bed, tossing and turning in restless slumber.

Where his body is not tangled in the sheets, it shines with sweat in the dim light from the braziers. Each limb is ringed with a thick metal shackle and long chains that lead down to their holds—two in the floor, for his legs, and two in the wall for his arms. There looks to be enough slack to allow him free movement of the room, but not enough so that he can reach the door.

The room itself is small, made of the same ruinous stone as the corridors of Abyss, though it is less cold and damp thanks to the braziers. The quality of the large bed suggests it was brought from somewhere else specifically for Dimitri’s occupancy, but it is the only piece of furniture to be seen. These are not the accommodations Felix imagined. It reminds Felix more of a dungeon cell than a bedroom.

But, then, Dimitri is in _chains._ For a good reason, Felix reminds himself: Dimitri is little more than a wild beast in the throes of rut. To know it is one thing, but to see him like this, a prince chained like a wild animal, is another.

Maybe this was a mistake after all. What answers could Dimitri possibly have for him in this state? What could he understand about Felix’s body that Felix does not? There is no explanation to be found here, only trouble, and later, awkwardness—but he cannot move one way or the other. His feet forbid it. There is only one direction he wants to move: forward. 

His thoughts are interrupted by the heavy chains dragging against the floor.

“Felix?”

For a second, Felix thinks he’s woken. But Dimitri doesn’t lift his head—he rolls onto his stomach, pressing his cheek to the pillow with his eyes still screwed shut. His expression suggests agony. “Felix,” he says again, but this time it sounds more like a moan, and another heady pulse of scent pours into the room. There’s distress in it. Felix’s own glands _burn_ under the patches _,_ trying in some desperate, pitiful way to console him.

_You’re the one he always asks for._

The bed creaks as Dimitri rocks against it, and even the peripheral sight of it is enough to twist Felix’s stomach into knots.

He tries not to look. He really, really does.

And there is not much to see, with Dimitri’s cock pinned between his body and the bed. But Felix can’t help the way his gaze drifts down the fluid line of Dimitri’s back, over the curve of his ass, the muscle there flexing as he works himself against the sheets. He can’t help the way his breath hitches at Dimitri’s frustrated growl, the jump of his own cock in his pants at the sight of this, of Dimitri when he doesn’t know he’s being watched, listened to, _desired._ He can’t help the whimper that escapes him when Dimitri says— 

“Felix, _please—”_

Felix stops breathing.

Dimitri’s head whips up. His eyes lock on Felix, recognition clearing the fog.

“Felix,” he says, “you’re—”

“Yes,” Felix says. “It’s me.”

Dimitri moves like a man possessed. The chains must be heavy, but they do not even seem to slow him down as he rips himself from the bed and throws his weight against their hold. Felix shrinks back against the door, his hand flying to his sword. 

“You shouldn’t be here. I could hurt you.”

Felix almost laughs at that. Of all the reasons.

“I’d like to see you try.”

“Why.” _Why are you here._

It doesn’t sound angry. It sounds miserable.

“I _had_ to come here,” Felix says. “It was like, this…compulsion. You did something to me. I can’t—something is _wrong_ with me. And I think something’s wrong with you, too.”

Dimitri’s eyes shutter at that. He lifts one chain-heavy wrist to touch his fingers to his temple.

“I—it just came on, suddenly. One moment I was fine, and the next, I…Goddess, I can barely remember the journey. How many days have I been here?”

 _Days?_ “Hours,” Felix says.

Dimitri looks distraught. His scent sours again.

“When you say something is wrong…”

“I’ve never had a rut like this. Ever since I—you. Last week. It started last week, alright? I followed you down here. That’s how I found out about—well. This. And now I can’t—no matter _how many times—_ I can’t knot, alright? And it has something to do with you, because every time I close my eyes all I want is.” He can’t say it, because saying it makes it real. “I…”

“Yes,” Dimitri says. “At the training grounds, it hit me. I can—you smell like yourself, but—different. It smells like…”

And with that, he feels an uncomfortable, growing wetness in his smalls.

“Omega,” Felix breathes, finally understanding. No, he’d understood before. He just hadn’t wanted to believe it. 

“You should leave,” Dimitri says, backing away. “There will be another wave. I will be—incapable of reason, and conversation. I must ride it out. I promise you, when this is all over, I will help you get to the bottom of—”

“No.”

“What?”

Felix swallows and takes a step forward. Dimitri takes a step back.

“There’s one way to end it, now. Tonight.”

Dimitri’s eyes are wide as saucers, the blue of them so deep it almost looks black in the light. “Felix, we could not possibly—”

“Why not? Did you want to spend the next—Goddess knows how long in this place? You said yourself that mere hours have felt like days. Whatever this is, it isn’t a normal rut.”

“But—”

“I don’t understand it myself. But there is slick leaking out of my _ass,_ and every part of my body feels like it’s on fire.” He takes another step forward, and Dimitri takes another step back. The backs of his knees hit the bed. “I’m already here. Just knot me and make it go away for us both.”

That seems to hit Dimitri squarely in the chest. He sits down on the bed. Felix’s flicker briefly to his cock, hard and red where it lays against his thigh, wetting the skin there with precome.

“You are making it incredibly difficult to control myself,” Dimitri grits, staring down at his own white-knuckled grip on his knees.

“I just asked you not to.”

“But I—”

“If you hurt me, I’ll give it back to you tenfold,” Felix says, even as he unbuckles his sword belt with one hand and lets it clatter to the floor. “I might give it to you anyway. I don’t know what’s happening to my body, or how much of me is omega, but it doesn’t feel like all of it.”

Dimitri doesn’t look up, but he doesn’t refuse him again, either.

Felix kneels between his legs, and all of the breath shudders out of Dimitri’s body.

“Don’t get ahead of yourself, boar,” he says, and tries not to make eye contact with the fleshy knot at the base of Dimitri’s cock, big around as his fist even uninflated. He procures the key from his pants pocket. “Yuri said not to let you break the chains.”

“You—spoke to Yuri?”

“How do you think I got in?” He unlocks the shackle around one ankle.

“I thought perhaps you had murdered the guards in cold blood when they refused you.” 

“Mm,” Felix says, occupied with the other shackle. He’d thought of that, too.

“Are you certain this is alright? I have a feeling that once I—” 

“Shut up. Give me your arm.”

Dimitri obeys. It’s so easy; Dimitri listens to him so _easy._ Felix feels a little drunk on it, overwarm with his own arousal and the pleasure of touching Dimitri’s skin, however perfunctory the task at hand is.

The shackle on his right arm falls to the floor with a heavy clunk. One remains.

“Do you remember the night I presented?”

Felix’s eyes lock onto Dimitri’s. Never once have they spoken of it, this long-buried memory between them. At first it had been too awkward, and then it had been too late.

“Yes,” Felix says.

“I think I knew, then, that you were mine.”

His world stops spinning, for a second. The word feels like a physical thing in the way it rolls over his skin, leaving goosebumps in its wake. _Mine._

It has to be the rut talking.

But hadn’t Felix known it then, too? Hadn’t he been the one to soothe Dimitri through the painful tremors despite his own terror, his own confusion about what was happening? Hadn’t Felix wept when they peeled him away from Dimitri’s side, hadn’t he paced for days at the mouth of the wing that held Dimitri’s rooms, because no one would allow him any further back than that?

“I remember your scent,” Dimitri said. “How sweet it was as you lay beside me. I have remembered it since.”

Felix swallows, and pointedly looks at the movement of his own hands as he slots the key into the last shackle.

“It’s hardly sweet,” he says, voice low. The shackle slips off. Felix sets it gingerly on the ground.

Not a second later does he find himself pulled up and pinned to the bed, Dimitri a heavy, searing weight on top of him. Felix is overwhelmed like this, nose so close to Dimitri’s glands. Just slightly raised, they look _wet_ with scent. He can’t even bring himself to speak for fear of opening his mouth and sealing it over one of them.

“It has never been so potent to me as it is now,” Dimitri says. His fingers touch Felix’s neck, gentle, fingernail slipping under the edge of one patch. “Even beneath these.” He peels it away from Felix’s neck.

It’s too much. Dimitri is supposed to be violent, dangerous, mindless in seeking his own pleasure, in fulfilling his own urge to breed. What were the chains for? Holding back this insipid tenderness? 

“It’s potent because of what I am to you,” Felix says, reaching up with his own fingers. His gland smarts when he rips the other patch away in frustration. “It’s instinct. Nothing more.”

He can’t bear the thought of it being more.

“I do not care what you are, Felix,” Dimitri says, circling his wrist with warm fingers. “Only that it is you.” Felix meets his eyes again, rapt and wordless as Dimitri brings his hand close to his own face and presses a kiss to the inside of his wrist. Dimitri’s cheek is feverish beneath his palm.

“You were saying my name,” Felix breathes.

“I always think of you. I have imagined it a thousand times, just as you were. Touching you. Kissing you. Having you, like—”

“Show me,” Felix says. “This is your only chance. Show me what you were imagining. Make me—I need—”

Dimitri makes a noise that is part growl, part agreement, and then he is kissing Felix so hard their teeth clatter together.

It surfaces between them, then—the violence. Like something igniting, exploding into flame, it burns through Felix and all the places he and Dimitri touch. It is instinct, the pull of right and wrong at once, to be pinned beneath this alpha, beneath Dimitri, kissed to bruising. His tongue skirts the sharp of Dimitri’s teeth, and then his own are digging into Dimitri’s lip, _hard._

Dimitri groans in pain or pleasure, and tears his mouth away. There is a part of Felix that is pleased to see it bloodied, and all of him shudders when Dimitri glares down at him and slides his tongue across his stained-red canines.

“Is that what you meant by giving it back?” Dimitri asks. Sitting above Felix, he’s painted by the braziers in vivid color, orange light falling over every naked curve of his body and fading into shadow.

“Did you imagine it would be gentle?” Felix asks. “Too bad.”

His shirt is abruptly torn down the middle.

Felix gasps at the sound, mouth falling open and panting anew when Dimitri tears it down his shoulders. He can’t shimmy out of the ruined thing quickly enough, hauling himself up and rolling his shoulders so that Dimitri can slide it down his arms and throw it across the room. His hands go immediately to the ties on his pants, but Dimitri knocks them away with a growl.

The pants come off after his boots, his smalls following in their wake. The warm air is cool against all the places he is damp; between his thighs, slick flows out of him steadily. The sheets are already wet with Dimitri’s sweat and spend, but adding to the mess with his own and mixing their scents strokes something in him that he cannot determine is strictly alpha _or_ omega. It’s simply _right._

He is relieved to see his cock has not changed whatsoever since he last saw it. Hard and leaking against his stomach, his own knot sits uninflated at the bottom, as ever. Next to Dimitri’s, he wonders how he ever feared hurting an omega during a tie. It’s—well. His body will take it, won’t it? It wouldn’t ask for what it couldn’t take. 

But it is not Dimitri’s cock that enters him first.

Felix’s fingers slip fruitlessly over the sheets as he’s dragged down the bed by his hips. Without warning, Dimitri lifts them off the bed and pulls Felix to his waiting mouth.

 _“Fuck.”_ The first hot slide of Dimitri’s tongue over his hole makes him arch, and keen, and writhe in Dimitri’s firm grasp. Dimitri groans into him, licking and sucking, absolutely drenching himself in Felix’s slick. It’s disgusting, Felix thinks, and grabs his cock with one frantic hand. “That’s so—you’re going to—I’ll—”

He’s there, fast, spilling over his hand as his hole flutters around Dimitri’s tongue, making high, fluttery sounds all the while. Dimitri eats him through it, fingers digging hard into his flesh, and only relents once Felix slumps back down against the sheets, boneless.

“I didn’t ask you to do that,” he says, when Dimitri does not immediately set him down. “You’re prolonging this. I _asked_ you to—”

Dimitri noses into his inner thigh, and bites, hard.

Felix screams. Alpha teeth, pointed, sharp, cut through flesh as easy as a hot knife. It’s supposed to make bonding marks around the glands easy and painless, but all it does where Dimitri has chosen to sink his teeth is set his nerves on fire and make his back bow off the bed. Felix comes again like that, completely untouched, cock pulsing uselessly with what little seed he has left inside it.

There are tears in his eyes when Dimitri crawls back over him. He can feel them soaking his lashes, just as he can feel the burning ache in his thigh. It’s not a bonding bite, but it is still a _mark._ It will scar, he knows. It will be there for a long time. Maybe forever.

“You,” he says, glaring impotently up into Dimitri’s dark eyes. They are clouded over with rut—there might as well be no one home. This was what Dimitri had meant by a _wave._

“Shh,” Dimitri says.

Felix scowls. “Did you just—” shush me, he thinks, bewildered.

“Be quiet.” A hand closes around his throat. It doesn’t squeeze or press; it’s simply a warning, a sort of scruff that works immediately to quell his temper.

There is a smear of blood at the corner of Dimitri’s mouth, and all he wants to do is lean up and lick it off. But Felix swallows beneath his palm, and waits. 

“Everything you say is at odds with your body,” Dimitri says, when he’s sure Felix has settled. “I can smell you, taste you—your desire, your pleasure. I know what you need. I’ll give it to you. You don’t need to do anything. You just need to give yourself up to me. Understand?”

It takes a moment. Felix’s body is at odds with itself in every way imaginable. There is a part of him that wants to succumb, and a part of him that wants to push back, to do this his way, to roll them over and put Dimitri in his place. But he is aching, and empty, and above all else, he wants to be filled.

Slowly, once, he nods.

Dimitri releases his throat. 

“I’ll give you what you need,” he says again. He urges one of Felix’s legs up, that it settles alongside his waist, opening him up.

Felix moans at the first press of Dimitri’s cock against his hole, the searing warmth of it. The head is blunt and wide, and it slicks against him several times before Dimitri growls in frustration and takes himself in his own hand, steadying the way.

There is nowhere for it to go but inside him, and slowly, slowly, it does. But Dimitri is big, and even if his body thinks it can handle this, even if every flickering thought and desire is to this end, he just doesn’t know if he can take it, in the end. 

But he _needs._

“You were made for me,” Dimitri says, like he can sense this. “You were always made for this. Only you.”

And who else could bear it? The long slide of Dimitri’s cock into his waiting hole, drenched, the insistent way it demands Felix part for him, yield, _take it._ Felix does, nails scratching down Dimitri’s back, reveling in the stretch and the heat and the completion of it. Only him.

 _“Felix,”_ Dimitri says, shuddering above him. Something even more wide presses at Felix’s rim, and Felix realizes Dimitri is already coming inside him, not even fully sheathed; that his giant knot is already inflating and that it will soon be too late to force it. He can feel himself being flooded, the hard pulse of Dimitri’s orgasm, the heat of his spill, endless.

“Knot me,” Felix says, only it comes out a sob. “I want it. I need to feel—just— _i_ _n—”_

“Yes,” Dimitri hisses in his ear, drawing his hips back and slamming forward, so that Felix’s body is forced to open that much wider around the swell. Felix digs his heels into Dimitri’s lower back, encouraging the give, moving his own hips to help them both along. It’s too much, too soon, not fast enough. Every thought and sensation is shrouded in a million little sparks, lightning-bright, blinding him behind his eyes.

He _wants_ for something wordless. Desire tears through him like an arrow from the field, so quick he can’t react to it, so sharp the flesh doesn’t register the consequence of its entry, and can’t stop it either way. Something breaks, tears, bleeds.

It’s euphoria. It’s better than coming—once, twice, a thousand times, it’s better than that, more than that, as Dimitri’s knot pops inside him, locking them together the way they’re supposed to be, forever. He wants this forever.

Felix comes back to himself with a mouth full of blood, teeth lodged deep into the skin around Dimitri’s scent gland. His jaw works at it, trying to make it stick, to make sure it takes.

“Felix,” Dimitri moans into his neck, and he sounds wrecked, desperate, his hips jumping forward with the last dregs of his orgasm. Slowly, slowly, Felix pulls his teeth from Dimitri’s gland, lapping at the wound with care. It’s important to treat it with care—to dress it, to heal it, and when it’s time, to refresh it. Felix will tend to it with all the care Dimitri deserves.

But for now, he thinks, beneath the solid, reassuring weight of Dimitri’s body, it’s okay to sleep.

**Author's Note:**

> if any of that was confusing, basically: felix wasn't in rut at all. following dimitri to abyss and smelling rut on him for the first time since early childhood was sort of a trigger for his omega gene, and what he's experiencing is a super wonky first heat as his body moves to make internal changes. the reason his ruts have never been "bad" like dimitri's are is because he has both genes and his presentation was basically a 50/50 toss up to begin with. 
> 
> since dimilix are true mates or whatever dimitri's alpha presentation nearly guaranteed felix would present as an omega, but then the western rebellion happened and all of those confusing feelings and his grief made him cut off the connection he felt to dimitri and allowed the alpha gene to take over. but, you know, true mates, so,,,,,felix's body was literally like "ok felix time to get fucked by your man. off you go" and then he accidentally bonds dimitri to him and how's THAT for a first time with your estranged best friend
> 
> other than that don’t ask me about the omegaverse lore, i wrote this in like five days and have no idea
> 
> (i obviously put way more thought into the lore than i meant to for a "pwp" fic, you can ask me about it if you want)
> 
> (how do we feel about a loose post-timeskip sequel to this i already have in the works. it’s way angsty)
> 
> i hope the characterization of the side characters was okay? no idea why i felt the need to slip claude and yuri into this, but i've never written either of them in my life so lol
> 
> anyway, LYDIA: thanks so much for giving me the opportunity to write this—i’ve always wanted to write nontrad a/b/o ESPECIALLY fluid/shifting biological imperative stuff, and getting to write even a little bit of an alpha/alpha dynamic between these two was amazing. your prompts were brilliant. i hope you enjoyed felix finally getting his hole stuffed if nothing else. merry holidays, friend <3


End file.
